Thursday, March 15, 2007

no peace, no democracy in Afghanistan

GIULIANA SGRENA was on DemNow - discussing a number of things, including afghanistan:

AMY GOODMAN: You have been covering Afghanistan. You have been to Afghanistan. What is the most significant thing to understand about what is happening in Afghanistan today?

GIULIANA SGRENA: I think that is to understand that there is no peace, no democracy in Afghanistan now, because when started the war in Iraq, Afghanistan was presented as a model to follow. There was working, and so we can follow this model. But the model was not a good model, because in the south we have still Taliban, or not only Taliban because now we call Taliban all the people that are against the government of Karzai. But they are very hostile to the occupation forces, because the majority of the attacks are in the south of the country.

And in the north and in Kabul, in power are still the people, the jihadists that did the war before against the Soviet Union when it was occupying Afghanistan. And then, after the withdrawal of the Soviet forces, they started to fight each other, and they destroyed Kabul. And these people that are military people with militias, armed, they are controlling the north of Iraq piece by piece. And they have also the control with the Taliban of the drugs traffic. So they have a lot of money, and the people, they have no money at all. And all the economy, half of the economy of Afghanistan is based on the drug traffic, the opium traffic.